Functions Main Page
'Main Screen ' The picture above is a screen grab of what you will see on your main screen. We will go through these buttons one at a time. Majority of the buttons are straight forward and self explanatory. Moving your mouse over the buttons will give you more information. Cash This is the amount of money you have in gold coins. Gold coins are earned by collecting taxes or selling goods. The drop down menu will show you how many 'Talents' you have. Talents are used in game to purchase various bonus items and buildings. You earn Talents for free by leveling and by logging in on consecutive days. '' '''Population' The numbers listed here shows 2 groupings. The first group is how many people are in housing, where the second grouping shows how many you can accommodate. Clicking the drop down will show you how many unemployed people you have. Unemployed people are also referred to as Leisure People and will go to work in buildings you build. If you dont have enough people - your buildings will not work. If you have to many people out of work, people will not come to your city. '' '''Resources ' Resources show you what goods you currently have in your warehouse. This is a quick guide, but a more detailed explanation is available under Control Buttons >Trade You can also GIFT and REQUEST from this tab by merely clicking on the resource shown. Fertility The Fertility explain which crops are abundant and which are not. This does not mean you cannot grow it – it just means that it will not grow as well. Every game is different even if you have the same civilization. The next three are purely your information, your civilization, your rank and your city name. Your city name can be changed with a Bonus Item. The next button is your Happiness (PRESTIGE) Monitor. The happier the population are, the more people want to come to it. Each level of Happiness increases the speed of immigration. There currently 4 levels of happiness from ice cold - an image of a mountain covered in snow to a bright sun where people worship you. Game Control Buttons As I said before most of these buttons are self explanatory however we have highlighted the more important ones below with a detailed description below. Some of these will need more in-depth discussion and as we develop this site even more these will be updated here. Building Menu ''' The building menu offers you various building options. When you click on any of these icons a sub category will appear. This will give you various options for your city, and further into the game there will be sub categories on sub categories for example Statues in Egypt. '''In order from left to right – Residence | Agriculture | Industry | Merchant | Municipal | Culture | Religion | Military | Decorations | Monuments When you move your mouse over the building it will give you more information for example how many workers it needs, what the production is or what the influence area is. '' '''Residence' There are only two types of residences in your city - normal ones and High Quality ones. Each will have its own requirements to level as each will have different needs. People are the base of your city. You need to construct your city, satisfy all of your citizens needs, and then upgrade your Residences to attract more immigrants. Residences need to be connected by roads, or no immigrants will be able to get to them. How can you upgrade Residences? After a Residence has been completed you must wait for immigrants to move in. While they are in the Residences, you must make sure you satisfy all of their needs. When the Residences are full you can upgrade them.Upgrading Residences requires materials. Click the Residences interface, and place your pointer over the Upgrade button for a few seconds to see what materials are required to upgrade. When you have met all of the requirements you can upgrade the Residence. My Residences are not full, why are there no immigrants moving in? If no immigrants are moving into a Residence, then this Residence must have some problems.Click the Residences interface, in the middle of the interface you will see a relevant prompt. Place the pointer over the question mark and it will shows the solution to the Residence's problem. If a city a has high unemployment rate or the city's Prestige is too low, this will also dissuade immigrants from moving to your city. How to Collect Taxes? Taxes are vital to your economy. When it is time to collect taxes, and the Residence requirements have been satisfied, you may collect them. Your citizens require certain materials to be able to conduct their business, and thus be able to pay their taxes. If you lack these materials, then they will not be able to pay. Collection time and tax amounts vary depending on the type of Residence. Higher level Residences will provide more taxes, but the waiting period is longer. Agriculture and Industry Agriculture and Industry are the bedrock of your commerce as they produces goods for your citizens to consume and in return they pay taxes allowing you to invest in more buildings. As you level up in the game these buildings require more and more resources to build. Therefore be careful where you place them as it is painful tearing them down when it cost so much. These buildings also has a negative impact on yoru citizens. No one wants to love close to them and even though you can build housing next to it, citizens will not move in. Always keep at least 3 tiles between a house and an industrial buildings (this includes farms). Later on you will learn about decorations. How do Agriculture and Industry buildings produce materials? After the buildings have been completed, and when you have enough workers, (note if you dont have enough workers the building will not operate and will have an ! (exclamation mark) over it) you can start to produce materials. The building interface will show which materials are needed for production, the production cycle (how long) and the production status (how long before completed). You can produce materials according to this information. This is also where your fertility in Agriculture plays a role. If you have a low fertility you will not produce as much. The in game message sounds confusing and implies you cannot. Make no mistake you can still grow it. At the far corner of this window is a small square (marked here with a circle) - this where you can automate production and if blue it will continue to make/grow the said goods until you run out of materials. Clicking this will make it greyish and therefore after the production cycle it will STOP making goods. Be careful of running out of materials as the game will warn you that you dont have materials to continue but the message is quite fast and sometimes missed. Move your mouse over buildings on a regular basis especially industry to see if there is SMOKE which indicates that they are working. Many times I have been caught off guard with buildings standing still and me running out of goods. Take note you also have an ACCELERATE and CANCEL button in this screen. As explained Acceleration can speed up production and is available in Bonus Items. Cancellation will first ask you to stop the production. There are no refunds for cancellation. TIPS!! - if you have enough resources eg: building materials, gold etc build your industry buildings and farms BUT do not click the completed button. This way you can plan your layout and only "activate" buildings when needed. ''' '''When production has been completed, where do the goods go? When production is completed goods are distributed to a Granary or a Warehouse. The Granary /Storeroom: Store grain, fruits, vegetables, fish and meat. Warehouse: Supplies that can't be stored in the Storeroom will be put in the Warehouse. TIPS!! Please take note if there are not enough space in your storeroom or warehouse the goods cannot be collected. So keep an eye on your Warehouse Shortcut at the top of the screen to make sure you do not end up in a situation where you need meat to collect taxes but just filled up your storeroom with fruits and have no money to build another. How can you increase production or extend the production cycle? Build waterwheels to water crops. This will increase their production by 50%. Build mills to grind grain for storage. The mill will harvest once every four cycles. Make sure you understand the Influence Area. Merchant The Merchant section is where you build your shops. Some residences do not require certain shops and other do. This is a very apparent difference between High Quality Residence vs Residences. Use your influence area for maximum potential. Therefore always make sure you have your houses in place before you place the various shops. Municipal Municipal buildings also sometimes refers to as SERVICE Buildings are buildings which fills services in your city. On our graphic above they are from left to right: Water | Fire | Police | Hospital | Granary | Warehouse | Palace | Shrine | Trader | Tax Office | Mill and Irrigation Depending on your civilization you may also have a CONSTRUCTION Building and instead of a Shrine another building for example Congress in Greek. Each of these buildings will service another building from which the most important ones are probably Fire, Construction, Police and Hospital. There are a number of missions asking for these and your buildings will either fall apart, burnt to the ground, murder each other or all the workers will go mad from a plague. All buildings are affected by these and the only ones not are decorations and monuments. When you build these building check the influence area so that they over lap each other. TIPS!! I make roads on the edge of the influence area so I know how far they go as not to waste my next one. Learn the order of demand for these buildings it will save you money and loss of buildings. Culture The culture buildings like service buildings offer a service to the resident. Each civilization has different ones and each level of housing requires more culture. Take note that High Quality Residences will need more buildings therefore plan ahead in where you place your homes. Greek players need especially have concern as a number of their cultural buildings are very large. Religion More service buildings - this time focusing on religion. As with cultural buildings - they all are based on which civilization you chose in the beginning and as with them you will need to plan ahead. Military The Military tab allows you to build the various barracks for troops and armory to make weapons. Each civilization has different troops with different level of defense and offense. Keep this in mind when you ready to form a guild. Building troops are generally very expensive and requires some of your population. It is therefore advisable to use your neutral status as long as you can until you are ready to use some of your population and coins to build an army. Decorations Each civilization has its own designs and the Chinese Civilization probably the most and prettiest. That said they all fill teh same function and that is to make your city pretty. From time to time you will find that a house will not upgrade and the message is - This house has no decoration nearby - this message is suggesting that you need to get a decoration close to the house. Sometimes that means removing a road tile and let you road go a different route, but the house will not upgrade until its residents feel they have enough of a view. The biggest culprit in bad views are farms and industry, keep them away from houses. That said - your people also dont like living close to resources so keep them away from any possible mines or clay pits. Monuments Another area which changes depending on the Civilization. This is straight forward - you will get a mission to build a monument. Monuments are very very expensive - make sure you know where you want to place them as they will always take up a lot of space as well. It will also consume large portions of your population so be ready for this. Warehouse The Warehouse is effectively the overview of your city including what is happening in your storage, and who bought the goods you added for sale. The OVERVIEW is a snapshot of the health of your city. You don’t really control much from this panel or learn anything new which is not apparent in your main screen. This is also a synopsis of your Happiness (Prestige) Level and will show you what is wrong. We will explain this later in a bit more detail. '' The FOOD and GOODS Tabs explains what and how much of each you have in storage. The more advance players will maximize this information by calculating how much they will need to collect the levies and only build to meet their needs. This is not an easy task but will give you more purpose to the game. The ON SALE Tab is where you can collect your money you earned by selling goods in TRADE. This money is NOT COLLECTED AUTOMATICALLY. (''Also see Collecting money from Friends) Technology Research ' The Tech Tree allows for you to discover new skills and buildings. There are 2 things which are important in this screen. 1. DO NOT RESEARCH BEYOND what is expected. However researching one level up is acceptable. The reason being from Level 1 – 20, gold coins are precious and you don’t want to waste them by having great research which you cannot use until a much later level. 2. WORK WITH FRIENDS – always use your friends – it saves time and money. ''(See Friends Tab) You will notice on the picture to the right that there is a recap of your gold at the top and an ACCELERATE Button – Acceleration can speed up research and is very handy if you don’t want to hang around. Clicking on this will take you to your BONUS ITEMS where you can choose what type of acceleration you want. (Also see Bonus Items) Remember ''as you borrow your friend’s research they can use yours. When they do, you get paid a small amount for your help. This can only get collected by opening your FRIENDS TAB. '''Military ' The Military Screen has two screens of importance. The Military Management is an explanation of how large your army is and what they are doing. In our picture, this city has no army and is still NEUTRAL. If there was an army present – it would be able to see the units listed, or the fields they are occupying. In the TAB – MY FIELD you will be able to harvest fields you have occupied. To the right of the picture is an image of a DOVE – NEUTRAL CITY. This city is not at war with anyone and cannot attack anyone. However if you click REMOVE you can enter the Battlefield Map and conquer some areas and even cities who are also no longer NEUTRAL. Below this is where you find your War History and your Rank on the server you play on. In the second screen available in Military Button is the League/Guild Management – you can see the various Guilds available to join. You can also create your own guild but this will cost TALENTS. Using the SEARCH function you can find a friends guild, alternatively locate it below clicking on NATION: ALL. Having a Guild has many benefits as there are numerous missions for guilds set up by the Game Designers. This makes for added fun and will help you get those resources you might need from your fellow members. This also takes your game from just city building but maybe a dictator occupying cities who demands tribute. In order to join a Guild, you have to remove Neutral and apply to a Guild. Take note you cannot join a guild without a palace. In our sample here you can click Apply to join, but this Guild is FULL as there are 10/10 members. As your guilds get stronger you can purchase more slots by using Talents. (Military will be discussed in more detail - see here) '''War Once you removed Neutral, you can enter into war mode. You can capture other non-neutral cities and resources on the map. How to Train Soldiers Build barracks to train soldiers. Training soldiers will use Idle Workers. This is a solution to unemployment in later periods of the game. Different soldiers cost different amounts and have different battle strategies. You should train soldiers according to your economic power and the battle's requirements. How to Build Troops Open Military Management, and then click the portraits of soldiers that have finished training. How to March and Occupy Click on your destination on the World Map and then choose March Here to send troops. When the troops arrive you can start a battle to occupy the city. How to Resist Invasions Choose troops to Station in your city. The troops will automatically enter the battleground when your city is under attack, and attempt to resist the invasion. How to Assist Friends in Battle You will have to march to the spot on the map first. When you get there select Enter Battle and Choose Attack Side or Defense Side to join and assist your friends in battle. Trade The TRADE window has loads of information on and initially it is a bit daunting. However you will learn the ropes very quickly. First you need to understand that you need a TRADING STATION, a trading Station costs TALENTS and can be bought in your BUILDING Menu>Municipal. You ONLY need a Trading Station to sell. If you just want to buy, you can easily just click BUY. Let us just briefly explain the top part of this menu. This is mostly historical data or information to help you sell or buy. In our picture you can see that yesterday people traded Clay Tiles the most and Spices the least. In our picture “today” thus far we sold copper the most and bricks were not very popular. Everyday this changes and it is my understanding is updating in real time. That means if you have a lot of copper it is worthwhile to sell as there is a high demand for it. Scrolling up and down on the far left – you will be able to access each product. Be aware that some civilizations do not use some of the items and some of the advance players might want to speculate if you have the time or understand how to be a commodities trader. In our example we are Buying/Selling Wood and you will see the REFERENCE PRICE – the average price, the OPENING PRICE – when the market opened (calculated on past performance) and finally the HIGHEST PRICE and LOWEST PRICE. These latter two is what people paid for the goods. Buying and Selling Buying and selling can’t be any easier, but somehow it confuses people a bit. When you have the TRADE Window open click BUY after you selected the product you want. In our case we have WOOD. This window will automatically insert the REFERENCE PRICE – remember this is the average price and the game is basically telling you to bid around this price to get a purchase. To make life easier I would normally change this price to 5 coins more than the reference. You can off course change it to what you want but will not be guaranteed a sale. The game will ALWAYS sell you the cheapest goods first, so don’t worry that you will spend the max amount. However in the event that there are no cheaper options – the game will ask you to raise the BID AMOUNT. At this point you need to decide if it is worthwhile or better to just wait for your own or beg in the world chat screen. The only other thing you need to know on this screen before you complete your purchase is the AMOUNT you can buy. You can ONLY buy as much as the space available in your warehouse and the amount of coins in your treasury.. Selling is not much different. However the game requires you to do some math. When you click on SELL – the window on the left will open. In order to calculate a price for your goods, you will need the reference price from the Trade Window, and then times it with the amount that you want to sell – this will give you the total price which you need to enter before you can click ADD.However you can sell at ANY PRICE you want. If we use my picture on the left the calculation – I want to earn 6000 coins from the trade – when I add the 6000 in the box you can see here the UNIT PRICE will adjust. If I don’t really care on how much I want to earn but rather only use the HIGHEST PRICE as explained above, then take that amount and times it with your amount of units. Map The map is vital in the following areas: 1. Finding new friends. 2. Taking part in battles or competitions 3. Occupying resources But let’s explain some of the key areas first. At the top you will see the City Name,Amount of Military (this is your max) the area (in this case 100) the GO and MY AREA buttons. On the actual map you will see some guilds (the larger Shield flag) occupying tiles; you will see neighboring cities being built in various stages and resources. The more advance players will use this section to their advantage. This is where you capture more resources, or partake in battles with other cities. In order to use this you have to remove the NEUTRAL Status. Remember when you remove this – you will need a bonus item to turn back otherwise you can’t undo it. Friends How do I make friends? You will have to make friends in this game. Some of the mission requires you to have friends and some missions require you to interact with them for example giving them food or goods. The easiest way in making friends are in the World Chat window (bottom left of your screen) - just click on any person's name and a Private Screen will open from where you can visit this person and ADD him/her as a friend. The other option is to open the MAP Screen and add people around your city as friends or from neighboring areas. The worst place to ask is in Facebook. Your friend MUST be on the same server as you in order for you to add them and must be your last option unless you want to start over on a new server. What are the purpose of having Friends? Your friends helps you research making it cheaper and less time for you. On the reverse if they use your research you also get paid some coins. They also visit your city and with that leave you some coins. But most important a good friend can help you in battle and help you share goods. Remember - you have to collect all monies from your friends tab - under the NEWS ABOUT FRIENDS which will give you a history of what happened whilst you were away. I collect mine once a week and then scroll down until I find the last one I collected which will be greyed out. Bonus Items The Bonus Items are a selection of “gifts” you receive when you level the game or complete missions. You earn these or you can buy them. Each section has its own unique quality and check back regularly on what you have and how you can use it. The most used Bonus item is probably Acceleration. Use them wisely. Do not forget to check in regularly to see which items you do have. '''Now that you have been introduced the game mechanics – you can play your '''heart’s content – remember this is a CITY BUILDING GAME, at times you will have to destroy buildings to make way for other buildings and as frustrating as this is – it is the nature of the game. http://era-of-empire-english.wikia.com/wiki/File:E2.png